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Several readers have written with word of a new doorbell, invented by 13-year-old Laurence Rook. What's so special about a doorbell? This one lets you answer the door from wherever you can receive a call from its embedded 3G chip; to your in-person caller (facing the doorbell), that means it sounds like you're answering the door over an intercom system, even if you're really across town. Pretty clever way to make it harder for a thief to know if a home is actually occupied, though Rook says that he initially just wanted a system to avoid missed packages.

In our neighbourhood, they stop looking about a block away because there is not a house with the right address where the GPS coordinates say it is (but all the houses on the street are clearly marked).

In a lot of places I go, the GPS coords are horribly off. I've stopped bothering to inform mapquest, google maps, etc. because when I look for a condo I lived in 6 years ago, that had been there for 3 years before that, still doesn't show up on google maps and is unroutable.

I've caught a UPS deliverer just dumping it and running off even though the sender had requested a signature, and the only reasoning I caught him was because I was eagerly expecting the package, happened to be home, knew it would arrive soon, and knew a signature would be required. "Huh, oh yeah... it does say signature required... oops, yeah, sign there"

Another time a UPS deliverer just put a "you weren't there" notice while I was at home late one evening, never heard a knock and I would have.

I often have stuff I've ordered that is too big to fit through my letter box left on my doorstep. It's a very quiet road and there is partial cover so it's nearly safe, but still.

The worst one so far was my latest (contract) mobile phone. You couldn't tell it was a phone from the package, but there was an impossible to miss "MUST BE SIGNED FOR" sticker on it. Needless to say, it wasn't.

First time I've ever heard of that. Here they only deliver weekdays 8 - 6p.m. Maybe on a saturday morning if you pay two or three times the standard charge and maybe on the day they say they will (but even that's not guaranteed) -- and that's all.

So far as getting domestic deliveries for households where people work for a living, forget it. There's no possibility that ANY of the couriers will work outside business hours. All I can suppose is that they make far too much profit from their current practices

When I worked for UPS (In USA) back in 2001 we worked up to 13 hours, 12 with lunch was all the law would allow, and we weren't allowed to return to the building until we attempted delivery on all packages. There were many days I clocked out at 8pm, it's expected at Christmas time, but if your loader screws up then it could be anytime throughout the year. I'm not gonna say all drivers are perfect but I would try to get rid of every package, just so I didn't have to see it the next day.

Where I used to live the mailman was afraid of one of my dogs because she has blue eyes.

No, seriously, that was his explanation!

So whenever he was supposed to deliver a package he'd just drop off a "You weren't home" slip and drive off, leaving me to pick up my package at the post office. Considering how ridiculously expensive packages are to send in Denmark that really pissed me off on numerous occasions, especially when I'd ordered something from a company and paid the postage myself.

Our local driver(s) have on several occasions not come to the door, but mark in their system that I wasn't home. I've even been sitting out on my front porch before and gotten a notification in my email that UPS missed me. However upon calling it they said "we're sorry but if you missed the driver he'll try and redeliver tomorrow". Basically they treat residential customers like shit because they can and most people simply put up with it. Once or twice they've left a package for me at the front office of my apartment complex without bothering to leave a note on my door meaning they just drove as far as the office and then left. Being that the front office is nearly a mile from my door, I made the driver go pick the package up and bring it to me the next day. It was about 75lbs of bulky box, and since I have no car there was no sane way of me going to pick it up. Seriously fuck UPS right up their fucking asshole.

One amusing incident, I had ordered about $10,000 worth of equipment from the Apple online store. I was eagerly awaiting it, for fucking obvious reasons. I was waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Hours were ticking by. The end of the day was coming. I was getting worried. Eventually, I checked online again. It claimed it had been delivered. It had not. It wasn't outside and nobody had knocked or rung a door bell or called my phone or anything.

I called the leasing office to see if it had been left there (often UPS or FedEX will claim I wasn't at my apartment, so that they could just dump the package in the leasing office and skip delivering it to me). Nope, nothing there.

So, I called FedEX. They looked into their information. Confirmed - yep, we delivered it!

Um . . . . no, you didn't. You definitely did not deliver a bunch of shiny expensive stuff to my door.

They said they would have to look into it and call me back, later.

In the meantime, I took a wild fucking hung and called up the physical Apple Store at the local mall. I asked if they had received a delivery today. They confirmed that it was delivery day and they'd received pallets of stuff. I explained my situation and asked if they could look for any out of place deliveries with my name on them.

Yep, they found them.

I went to the store with my ID and receipt to prove that it was my stuff and they gave it to me.

Two days later, I got a call from FedEX to let me know that they believed they might have delivered the items I bought from the Apple Store to the Apple Store.

I told them that I knew that and that I'd already driven there and picked it up earlier in the week.

I think more people knock than ring doorbells, even when they are available.. UPS has over the years gotten bad about just dumping the package on the porch.. I think most do attempt a knock (or ring), but they are trying to get on to the next address so they are not going to wait too long before they just leave it.. If you are really concerned and unable to be there to make sure you get you package, Fed Ex has a hold for pickup and you can get your package at the nearest office.

I think more people knock than ring doorbells, even when they are available.. UPS has over the years gotten bad about just dumping the package on the porch.. I think most do attempt a knock (or ring), but they are trying to get on to the next address so they are not going to wait too long before they just leave it.. If you are really concerned and unable to be there to make sure you get you package, Fed Ex has a hold for pickup and you can get your package at the nearest office.

Many people don't realize that UPS and FedEx now offer a shipping option called "shipper release". It is a discounted shipping option that guarantees that the driver will leave the package, no matter the neighborhood, weather conditions, etc. The building could be on fire and they will leave the package. The catch is that the carrier is not responsible for lost or stolen packages. Many shippers use this option because it is cheaper to replace any packages lost, than it is to pay full shipping price (The shipper release discount is pretty big). Many, many shippers now use it. This in large part why packages are left. Often a driver wont even knock when the package is shipper release, they just drop and run.

This.
I worked for them over a holiday season as a "driver helper" once, and the whole experience was pretty eye opening. Pretty much every package is "shipper release" if it's residential. A lot of good drivers would tell me that if it looked expensive (laptop sized box from Best Buy, for example) that I should try to get a signature even though the package didn't require one. But basically, drivers don't need to get your signature anymore. They should still try to deliver something, but if it's 3pm in the afternoon (the routes are designed to have them doing residential in the evening, but if they have an easy day...) they are going to assume no one is home, and might make the bad choice there. UPS makes all their money from commercial stuff anyway, residential is just a side thought that is a total pain in the ass to deal with.

I know someone who lives in a rural area and has about 7 dogs and other animals. The UPS guy is a wuss and is afraid of dogs. He throws their packages in the desert next to their house, leaves them in the road in front of the house, and in general does everything he can to avoid going on their property. One package sat in the desert for 2 weeks before it was found. Another nearly got run over.

Whats funny is that the guy complained that one of the dogs "tried to bite him" and so he kicked it. I know the dogs

You might know the dogs, but the delivery guy does not. Why should he take the chance, or brave phobias to deliver a package into the property, rather than just to the property? Think before you compose.

That's very easy to say when you met the dogs with their owner around. When he's not, even the calmest dog will become territorially protective and aggressive towards strangers coming near a home (or car, as anyone who's ever worked as a parking valet and had to deal with asshole customers who complain to your boss because you didn't want to get in the car that their rottweiler was growling in the back of and then leave unattended in the July noonday sun for five hours can attest to).

Back in 2005 when I finally decided to upgrade to a 250gb SATA drive, I first saw it being flung over my fence into the front yard in what looked like a trash bag (possibly because it was raining?). I only knew to look outside because my dog went crazy. He goes nuts when he hears Fedex and UPS trucks--or anything that sounds like one.
They did the whole black plastic bag with a box inside of it again sometime later that year, leaving it next to our mailbox, which happened to be right next to our trash pile

I used to have this issue too. If you are expecting a delivery, the only solution I have found to this is to post a large note on the door telling the UPS driver that you are home.

I suspect that most UPS drivers don't expect people to be home so they do a light knock & run before you have a chance to get to the door. They are damn fast too. Before I started posting note it was always race to the front door and out the front yard to try and catch the driver before they left.

A housemate of mine once handed me an unexpected package on the 25th...which contained crumpled business documents that had been overnighted to me for delivery on the 18th. The week-long delay had cost me half of my permitted time to research and fill out the rather extensive, and necessary, paperwork in the package. Incensed, I figured that FedEx was to blame since they had delivered it, so I checked the tracking info for the package, only to discover that it had been delivered

I had one company (UKMail) deliver a "We called but you were out" card without even attempting to deliver the parcel. The guy stopped his van in the middle of the road, got out, put the card through the letterbox, got back in and went to drive off.

I was outside the house working on my car. He walked right past me. You'd have thought that the extension cable running through the slightly-open front door would have been a dead giveaway...

That's exactly why I've stopped ordering anything from Borders. Or Verizon; when I got my last phone, I had to chase the FedEx guy down the street after the second time he tried to stick a note in the door while I was in the house (the first day, I waited eight hours by the door, except for the thirty seconds I was in the bathroom he snuck up and didn't ring). But at this point, if I'm buying anything online and get to the shipping part of the checkout and see FedEx in there, I abort.

OK, I'll acknowledge that some people are abandoning their land line and going only wireless, but putting a doorbell on a 3G system strikes me as somewhat absurd. Maybe it will be useful in places where the cell carriers don't rape their customers, but using it in the USA, with the extra account it would require, would be crazy for most people. At the very least it should also have the option to tie into the home's land line rather than use the cell network.

I could "invent" a lot of things, if practical costs of using a wireless network were not a consideration.

And in countries other than the U.S. you get an android phone for free with a two year contract costing you 15 €/month including 1000 minutes. So the total cost will be 24x15 € = 360 € + whatever the system uses for electrical energy during two years.

Except this isn't anything 'new'. One of the newer apartment buildings built on campus (finished in ~2005) lets you buzz in anyone from anywhere using your phone. I believe the place also had washer/driers that would text you when they finished their cycle.

Most apartment building I've lived in, including my current 20 year old one, have the main entrance intercom system just dial a pre-programmed phone number. In the past you would give it your land line and buzz people in from that, but since you can have it call any number most people I know now have it call their cell, since they don't have land lines. I've been answering my buzzer/intercom with my cell phone for 8 years.

The trend toward "every gadget with its own bloody cell contract" is rather annoying, especially when the house in which this item would be installed probably has a perfectly good internet connection already or, even if unwired, a number of devices that could be sharing the single comparatively expensive cellular modem and contract.

Unfortunately, home automation still seems to be in a rather ghastly state. You can get something polished if you pay reasonably serious money or sink considerable time and ef

Imagine you have a small one-man shop and you just step out for groceries or something, wouldn't you want to be able to tell your delivery guy that he should wait for 5 minutes (and receive a nice tip if he did) instead of having to wait all day in your office for him?

Imagine you're a big company and you try to avoid having a phone system. It's not as absurd as it may initially look, considering that the setup cost of phone systems (even aside of the system itself, cables, phones, etc) is easily overcome by handing cells to all your employees, which has pretty much become the standard in some companies anyway. How about every secretary (or a few of your personnel) receiving a call when someone rings the doorbell and they can even open the door for them? Even if they're not in the company (granted, opening the door should be reserved to certain special occasions in such a case).

I could even see an added security feature, akin to a four-eyes principle, where the security head receives a call when a certain security door is to be opened and only his code, sent via cell, can unlock the door in addition to the guard's button.

Everything you just described could be done over wifi VoIP without the expensive monthly 3G bill.

Why not just tape a prepaid cellphone to the door with your number in the speed dial and a note that says "hold 1 to call someone to the door"? Wow... did I just invent something?! Now I just need a 13... no, make that an 11 yr old kid to peddle it....

I know it's hard to grasp for a geek, but most people are not tech savvy. They also do not want to "tinker" with it, they want a solution that "just works". For reference, see Apple and its recent success.

Also, 3G's price is not a killer everywhere either. Especially big companies can easily get a very affordable company rate from cell telcos, where adding another phone to the plan runs in the cents. Plus, you shift the burden of security on the telco. A VoIP solution would again require cables, something y

I've never had a landline. No, seriously. Cellphones have been affordable for 10+ years now, many people under 35 have never needed a landline, they left home at 18 and got a cellphone and that's all they've ever used. My parents and grandparents have landlines but that's because they're old.

Agreed: this is not practical or needed, and that's why no one has "invented" it in the past. Who wants to pay $50 a month for a doorbell? For that matter, who uses doorbells anymore? Friends and family call before they arrive and I'm already home when the pizza guy rings. I can't think of any reason I would need a doorbell that calls my cellphone. The "stops burglars" argument is very weak, I could get a alarm system for the house that would cost half as much monthly than a 3G doorbell would cost. I

For that matter, who pays $50 a month for an entry-level contract any more? Mobile contracts in the UK (and this is a UK story so I'll quote prices in GBP) start at around the £10 a month mark. For an application like this, you'd probably be far better off on a pre-pay tariff. The postman only comes once a day, and you're not going to be having long conversations with him over the intercom.

Remember that this system most likely just places voice calls, so won't need any data allowance.

Wonder how hard it would be to wire a doorbell to a Droid running Skype? Oh, wait, nevermind, I never answer my doorbell anyway since friends and family call before they arrive. Only people ringing the doorbell are salesmen who can't read the giant no soliciting sign.

Probably so that they can sell it as a self-contained product. Once you start relying on the end-user to provide components of a system critical to its operation, things very quickly start to go wrong.

Also, using VoIP is much more complex than using off-the-shelf cellphone circuitry to place ordinary voice calls.

I agree that a WiFi model is the next logical step, but it sounds to me that they just wanted to get a demonstrable prototype out the door.

I think I still have it saved somewhere in my old "Cool"alarm equip. I used to do installs in the pre-computer(pre 386 days). This was a box, with triggers and a phonemodule. Event triggers, allowed for voice out, mic in.

I think I still have it saved somewhere in my old "Cool"
alarm equip. I used to do installs in the pre-computer
(pre 386 days). This was a box, with triggers and a phone
module. Event triggers, allowed for voice out, mic in.

I think I still have it saved somewhere in my old "Cool"
alarm equip. I used to do installs in the pre-computer
(pre 386 days). This was a box, with triggers and a phone
module. Event triggers, allowed for voice out, mic in.

Exact same thing. So... innovation?

Kudos to him for a great innovation.

-@|

AC til I find it...

You were using 3G in the pre-386 days?

the 3G part is not that part that people think is the cool part. In fact, the 3G part is entirely irrelevant to the operation of the invention. You could rig one of these things to work over a ham radio, or better, as was suggested earlier, VOIP through a pre-existing connection and save a fortune. The 3G part was because the kid is 13, and all the components of this setup are fairly easy to wire together (probably doesn't even require a breadboard). All of the parts are standard off the shelf modules. Hel

Likewise, I've seen this sort of thing before. The gate to the development I used to live in had something like this. To get in, a visitor had to punch the house number into the gate keypad. It would then phone whatever number had been programmed into it for that house.

You could then talk back and forth and decide whether to let them in or not by pressing the button combo for gate opening.

It's not a bad idea, but it's not a new one either. At 13 I'm still impressed, but if the kid was older I wouldn't be.

Nothing new here, aside from maybe the 3G chip. When I rented out a loft in SF 10 years back, the landlady gave me the manual to the door intercom and I was able to program it via it's dial in touch-tone API to dial my cell so I could answer the door from wherever -- which was very handy.

This reminds me of the hack used in the Ferris Bueller movie when the door bell was pressed and a recording would playback over the intercom. If Ferris had this then, he could do his improvise the "sick and can't come to the door" routine from anywhere using a cell phone and not get busted by the recording repeating.

I thought teenagers the world over left voice communication in the dust for the much more trendy sms/mms. With a home networking setup, cheap webcam and some programming sense it wouldnt take much to set up an interactive door bell.

Then when people show up at your door, they download the app?! Brilliant! Android users can keep iOS users away, and iOS users can keep Android users away, and no one has to deal with the remaining riff-raff.

You know what might be better though? If you gave every doorbell a number, and then you could just enter the number of the person you wanted to talk to.

Before I got it changed, I used to get calls from my old condo intercom from half way across the country. My unit had a separate entrance so I never buzzed people in, even when I lived there. If the system responded to touch-tones then there is not much to invent here. It's just a feature-add.

No, it's not.

Your condo was using the phone system to act as an intercom, this kid's invention is a phone and doesn't require one already be installed. That means my apartment, which doesn't have an intercom system like your condo does, could have this system with minimal installation work.

While I can't see any need to buzz people into my house remotely for myself, it's pretty easy to think of reason's other people might want to do it: a family member or roommate being locked out, a cleaner or pet-sitter coming mid-day, a friend picking something up in an emergency, etc.

Personally, I'd just as soon not have physical keys, and just use an RFID system instead. Having a remote interface would be pretty cool too, especially since it could be used to merely give access to a porch or mud room for a

Yes, because clearly a police box and a phone booth look identical...
(I know what you mean though. Only I thought initially "Why is that TARDIS red instead of greyish?" - I've been watching the 1965-66 season recently:)

I'm confused. Packages are either left at the door or need a signature. How could faking that you are home convince a delivery guy to leave a package that needed a signature? And if you are not there will he not get in trouble if the package is stolen when you told him to leave it?

I work in the telecom field and we call them Enterphones. 90% or more of apartment buildings use them, of those, over three quarters of them are able to call any number you program in to them, the remaining ones are much older systems (more than 20 years old) that actually are inserted in to the phone line going to the particular suite, most of these are slowly being replaced by the newer version.

Interesting mention on the police stations, I had forgotten about those, at all the rural police stations around